January Updates

I’ve decided to do a 30-day meditation challenge, where I swap out my morning pages for 20 minutes of meditation. Morning pages clears my mind and helps me to get (and feel) really organised (and sometimes very inspired), so I’ll be interested to see how meditation differs. I can’t fit both into my day at the moment.

The only method of meditation that I know is TM meditation, which I learned from Kay Dyson in Fitzroy. I am so glad I did the class with her, and I now have a way of meditating that works for me. I think if I had continued to dabble in free and publicly available methods (like the Headspace app) then I would have continued to believe, “I can’t meditate.”

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I’m still using Todoist to organise my tasks, which I love, and I’ve started also using the Productivity Planner to then plan my days. I wasn’t making enough of a commitment to my day’s tasks; it was too easy in Todoist to just postpone something to tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow!

Unfortunately, the actual Productivity Planner (the hard back book) costs about a million dollars (shipping is currently ridiculous, and by the time it all gets converted to Australian dollars, it’s about $65 – no kidding – in comparison, a standard fiction book would be about $15, including shipping), but there is a free Productivity Planner PDF that outlines the process, and includes a couple of printable pages. the PP process is very similar to how I used to work (when I worked in an office), but it goes one step further – asks you to estimate “how many Pomodoros” a task will take, and then asks you to enter the actual time spent, at the end. I am committed to my tasks.

Productivity porn! Oops.

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I found and wanted to share this beautiful, relaxing wallpaper, inspired by Pantone’s colours of the year, by Clementine Creative:

I’ve done four subjects so far, and they’ve been getting progressively worse. Sometimes instructions in assignments will be terribly written, causing great confusion for the students; sometimes questions will be missing from quizzes; sometimes lecture material seems to have nothing to do with the assignment material; sometimes the quizzes will be riddled with errors. In one of the subjects, a great portion of the material was about Fitts’ Law, a mathematical formula that you need some basic (or even above-basic) mathematical knowledge to be able to apply, and they just threw the formula at you and then quizzed you on it. And some of the course content seems so out-of-date (unfortunately, I’ve experienced that before with universities!).

Amusingly, the Coursera system occasionally emails me to ask if I’ll be a “mentor” on the course and help other students with their questions (and give up my time, for free), or if I’ll grade some extra assignments. Nopers! You can please ask the University of California to take some pride in their work, polish and proof-read their course and make it beautiful, and then I might help you out!

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I was watching some YouTube videos by Mimi Ikonn, and at the start of them, she says “Hello, my beautiful friends!” – I love that. Hello, my beautiful friends!

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Mmmmmm. February is almost here. My new baby is due in April, but that could basically mean “any day now.” For February, I’m going to focus on my project, “Beautifully Organised Life,” and get my paperwork / admin / ETCETERA in order.

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Fox Woods (@msfoxwoods)
Hello. Yes, my name is Fox. I love making things (clubs, workshops, events, communities, stories, products, videos, music). I have two (2) small kids and one (1) small dog. I made the kids, but not the dog. That would be weird. ⇢ more